Category: Derrida

I have to agree with everyone in saying that Derrida, is difficult to understand!
Here is one quote I found specially challenging “Differences are thus “produced” – differed — by differance” what does this mean? Well, what I understood is that is all a big circle of differences. This “differance” is what produces things, like language that is it is said that first there are differences and then the thing with out essence is visible!!! Still this was hard to comprehend for me so I had to look at other sources to understand this concept of how differences makes something that is not really there (a ghost of what something is) and that it has no essence visible and what allowed me to understand this difficult concept was a simple example/metaphor and at the same time reminded me of my childhood. In the book an intro to lit. Theory they compared this concept of diffarance to the flip books that most of us made as children, and the explanation was that only the slight differences in drawing is what made us see the illusion of movement. What we saw had really no essence the only thing that allowed of to visualize this was the difference in the drawings. And with this metaphor I was able to better comprehend what Derrida was trying to say of course this is only one of the manny aspects he talks about. But for me it was one of the hardest to comprehend.

“this nonfortuitous conjonction of cybernetics and the “human sciences” of writing leads to a more profound reversal“

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

At first, I thought I would write this article as a “handbook for the lost reader in the land of Derrida’s text”, but then I thought it would be presomptuous as I am not sure I found my way. But I may have found a few wooden sticks on the path, enough to sit down now, and gather my thoughts around an unfortunate, yet warm, campfire. As hard as the poetry of the critic is to decipher (because this is poetry, and ironically enough, I had to constantly relate the words with what they refered to and what they did not refer to, to understand it…one could call it “differencial reading”), I found the concept of differance, once understood, amazingly clear: we think through difference, or else, we see the world, put in shape in our minds in differenciating things. This start with the most basic perception: I know this is blue because this is not red, not because it is blue in itself. Color-blind people (very badly named indeed) will tell you this: most of the time, they still see different colours. Colours exists for them because they see a difference. What changes are the name they (or “we” , depending on the point of view) put on it. Once again, this “handicap” is not a problem in itself. The difference from the common perception is the problem.

“Sparkle, the fire is on”: our minds are just like computers: we write the world (“writing” being understood “not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic inscription, but also the totality of what makes it possible) or the world is comprehended through our mind writing that acts as a computer: a + is not a -, a – is not a +, and the combination of those positive and negative signs creates the signification.

I tried to find examples to make it easier (that would be the grilled marshmallows to sweeten the Derrida’s hike experience). And I found this: translation…I am often struck (flabbergasted…I just love that word) with the fact that learning a new language, my students always look for the similarities, or else the equivalence of a word from French to English and vice-versa. And I tell them that I did the same, until I realized (was told probably) that if I wanted to understand English,  I should not look for the same but for the difference : looking for a literal translation that would work, as if a word had an entity in itself that could be transferred from one language to another, would be a dream. It is an ideal indeed (remains of a the Platonician metaphysics?). But bound to fail. Whereas if one looks , first, at how an idiom in a language works differently from another in another language, second, at how the entire grammar is a system different from another grammar, third, at how this language comes from a different culture where one could find a lot of means of explanation, then we can understand and then we can translate…and learn. In that process, “differance” gives to a language its identity (French ≠ English ≠ Spanish) but only to let other differences appear inside of the language itself (verbs ≠ adjectives≠ nouns for example) and outside of it (latin-based languages ≠slavian-based languages)…and that is how we learn, and translate, the world, on multiple scales. 

Ok…that is what I understood. Now I am going to eat my marshmallows…and maybe chocolate too, just to taste the difference. 

I have to confess that reading Derrida’s texts was very tough. But, after finished the reading process, the idea that keeps tingling in my mind is that, in synthesis, we can say that there is no Signified, only an infinite group of Signifiers. If am not wrong (won’t surprise if I am), Derrida creates the word “differance” to demonstrate that in language (and, I think, in life) we can never expect to reach a definite and concrete meaning. On the contrary, the “meaning” is given by the differences that a word, for example, have in relations to others. So, we only have “traces” that this process of differentiation left behind (here we can’t also talk about present, because it is always evocated from a past and evokes a future). This has a parallel to Saussure’s idea that a sign is defined by his difference with others. But, for Derrida, the idea of sign “is essentially theological” (309). He recognize that “perhaps it will never end” (309), but also consider that “its historical closure is, however, outlined” (309).

The discourse of Derrida is clearly against the metaphysic, because this tradition consider the existence of an ulterior and definite Signified. From this point, some categories of value are created (good/bad, superior/inferior, etc.), like in the case of speech and writing that Derrida points out. So, the sign, for him, is related with this metaphysical conception, because when we close it with a signified we give it a definite and concrete meaning. But, according to Derrida, the “meaning”, in fact, is a bunch of “traces” of the “differance”.

As I said, this is my synthesis of the ideas of Derrida. I am not completely sure about it, but it is what I understood (maybe is a “differance” from the “differance” of Derrida). But, I also was thinking of how we could apply this discourse to the daily life. I specifically was thinking in the political system. Applying Derrida’s ideas could be very revolutionary. We can say that traditionally, political and economic ideologies presented themselves as a closed Sign, so they have a concrete meaning that gives them a center. But, if this “metaphysical” idea of power is deconstructed, we can say that they don’t really have a signified that is beyond and true, so its authority is false. They are a “text”. In that sense, we can question every political ideology (and every ideology, in general) and not pretend to consider one as carrier of the “truth”.

To finish this post, I would also like to mention that while I was reading I also remembered a biblical phrase pronounced by God to Moses: “I Am that I Am” (I actually remembered it in Spanish: “Yo Soy el que Soy”). According to the ideas of Derrida, He would be the only one capable of defining himself by himself in a continuous present. We, the mortals, created by the “differance”, don’t have –as we would like to have- an ulterior meaning. So, we are basically nothing (nothing concrete, at least).